Month: April 2005

One More Day Closer to Deadwood


New Englanders in Iraq bowling candlepin

I am taking a week off this spring. There is a Boston wedding to attend which will be fun but that is at the end of the week. First, we are off to the Gulf of Maine coast in search of friends and family and a good amount of candlepin bowling. Ontario teases you with five pin as well as Freddie Flintson big ball ten pin but I grew up with candlepin – played only in Atlantic Canada and New England. Whatever I play, I score pins in my head one point at a time like candlepin – like I measure distance in feet rather than metric. It is fair and equitable every pin being meaningful. I do not, however, throw a ball like the Friday night Brookfield Elks softball pitchers of my 1980-ish teens at the Beazley Lanes near little T.O.’s Fletchers Restaurant and the old Crappy Tire. They might as well have been throwing fastball, ball bouncing once on the wood before hitting the pins well off the floor. Pins in the gutter and, half the time, into the next lane. You can’t do that with Freddy Flinston big ball. First time I played Freddieball with Jim from Newfie after passing the bar we hit strike after strike. Like shooting fish in a bucket. You also leave the pins where they fall, leaving you to deal with them through the second and third balls. No sweeping machine delay. You can hit the deadwood among half the others still standing and miss them all, guided by those down to the gutter. Cruel mistress the deadwood. Gotta learn to play the deadwood.

The game dates from the 1880s, when a shipment of narrow pins – later widened to two inches wide – gave a guy an idea. You can find an inordinately detailed history here…and another here. I recall hearing that Howie Meeker brought it to Newfoundland after he left the Maple Leafs and before he was Don Cherry before Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada. In 2003, CBC radio’s Inside Track ran an 11:30 minute piece on the sport. [Click the link and a .ram or RealAudio file will trigger.]

Funtime Lanes in Holyoke, near our Sunday night stop, has 20 candlepin lanes…maybe the most westerly in North America. Smokefree and bumper bowling for the weejins. Practice.

Boston Wins

It has taken a few creeky starts but Boston beat the Yankees last night. Apparently the great Mariano Riviera had an off night (again) against the Sox as is explained from this example of the wonder that is the baseball writing in The New York Times:

It was the first time Rivera walked three in one game since Aug. 23, 1997, his first season as a closer. But he said he was more discouraged by Tuesday’s blown save, when Jason Varitek homered off a pitch that missed its spot. That was a mistake, Rivera said. Yesterday, he suggested, he was beaten more by the circumstances. “The result wasn’t what I wanted, but I was happy with the pitches,” Rivera said. “I feel comfortable with the selection I made. It just didn’t happen.” For Rivera, though, it keeps happening against the Red Sox. He has blown six of his last nine save opportunities against Boston, starting with Mueller’s game-ending homer last July 24 and including the playoffs. Since the start of the 2001 season, 43 percent of Rivera’s blown saves in the regular season (12 of 28) have come against Boston.

Yea! That is a great stat. For all the money and all the skill, one key to the Yankees just gets a little off his game for the Sox. It is amazing that the two teams played each other 56 times over the last two seasons and have already added three more so far this year. Over all those games they are just about tied. You know, I think I could follow soccer fairly well if it was on the TV but I only had the standings. I do not know how I would follow baseball without the great reporting on it.

In other sporting news, the mighty Morton has been slowly ceeping up on Stranraer for the second promotion spot in Scottish Division Two fitba, now lying only 4 back with five games to go including one against them and the rest against weak teams…

Pos’n Team Games Goal Diff Points
1 Brechin
31
37
64
2 Stranraer
31
9
57
3 Morton
31
19
53
4 Stirling
31
0
45

Fingers are very much crossed and hopes are high for another big finish to the season.

Election Prediction

I think it is time to start the speculation. We need a May or June election like ze whole in ze head but the powers that barely be are doing their best to stumble towards that sad day for all. So sayeth The Star:

But if a Quebec judge today grants a major delay in the case, Gomery could lift the ban and reveal possible damning allegations against the Liberal party, both federally and in Quebec. Everyone concedes that the testimony will further erode Liberal support in Quebec, where the party holds only 21 seats. The Bloc Québécois, which holds 54 seats, is boasting that it could win as many as 70 seats in the next election because of the sponsorship scandal. But the real issue is in Ontario, and it is quite unclear whether Tory Leader Stephen Harper can turn the Brault testimony into a winner for his party. Thus, the Tories have been reluctant to suggest they might try to defeat the government. Spokespersons for all the parties concede that an election would be unpopular and that citizens could want to punish whichever party is blamed for not making the minority Parliament work. Frank Graves, president of the EKOS Research polling firm, says that’s his sense of the public’s election-appetite right now. Graves did a poll this winter that seemed to indicate the sponsorship controversy was a spent force; that the Liberals’ critics had got all the mileage they could from ethical issues. However, “now I’m not so sure,” Graves conceded yesterday.

So what would happen if there was an election. I think there will be a backlash on the sponsorship scandel as what comes out can never be as damning as the imaginations and rumours and the neophyte bloggy interest for all of those like the extra 3000 times people who showed up here an extra 5,000 times yesterday looking for the Gomery Commission answers – it will all turn into disgust with their realization that the entire medium and half their fears were a hoax. Thusly and therefore, here [Ed.: “too-tot-tooooooooot” go the horns!] is the next house of Commons IF the election is held before Canada Day:

  • Liberal 121 (down 10 in Quebec, up a few elsewhere)
  • Tories 95 (so sad, no one cared for the new puritanist)
  • NDP 31 (Ontario likes its social freedoms)
  • Bloc 61 (and they didn’t even have to get out of bed to get there)

Liberals plus NDP still miss a slim majority. Nothing is changed. Harper resigns after staying in bed for two weeks, the big sook.

Update:As Normie points out, the Toronto Sun reports, surprise surprise, that the PQ did the same thing. Does this change anything if true? Should the Tories show their cards on this too? Oh…I forgot. No one has wanted them in power for almost two decades.

Gomery Schlomery

I was thinking as the torrent of anguish flying around the Canadian bit of the internet began to subside this afternoon about scandels as we have them here. They have tended not to be in the British style about sex or in the US style about power. They tend to be about cash:

  • There were all those allegations about that friend to both the Christian Democratic Union Party of Germany and Brian Mulroney:

    That would be the same Karlheinz Schreiber from whom Mr. Mulroney was later — wrongfully, as it turned out — accused of receiving kickbacks in connection with Air Canada’s $1.8-billion purchase of aircraft from Airbus Industrie. The false accusation prompted Mr. Mulroney’s famous lawsuit against the government of Canada, in settlement of which he was eventually paid $2-million. Much of this was documented in Mr. Kaplan’s 1998 book, Presumed Guilty, a passionate defence of Mr. Mulroney’s reputation…

  • Saskatchewan’s Tories of the early 1990s were not so fortunate as…

    14 Conservative members of the legislature and two caucus workers were convicted of fraud and breach of trust for illegally diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from government allowances in a phoney expense-claim scam. The party was destroyed by this scandal

    Having worked on a breach of public trust case, I was very grateful to these guys for creating such a solid body of legal precedent to work with.

  • A number of Buchanan’s Conservatives Nova Scotia’s in the 1980s always seemed to be in the courts and/or the locally known “bagman” it seemed before the Westray diaster put all that in perspective if not entirely in the past. [Google, by the way, is a rotten historian as there is little to be found on the topic.]
  • And, as we all know, it was not only Tories as Jeffery Simpson wrote in The Globe and Mail in February 2004 about Trudeau’s Liberals:

    And, of course, there was patronage. When running for the party leadership in 1968, Mr. Trudeau said, “I’m not against helping a friend of the Liberal Party when I get a chance.” Generally, however, he disliked the grubby
    business of patronage. He couldn’t understand why anyone would participate in politics for the hope of reward.

    He learned — and wound up filling the Senate, agencies, boards and commissions with Liberals, ending his prime ministerial career with the greatest single-day orgy of patronage in Canadian history. His Quebec ministers met Thursday mornings in a dining room adjacent to the parliamentary restaurant to exercise political discretion on behalf of supporters and party friends. Mr. Trudeau’s ministerial fixers in Quebec
    included Jean Marchand, Marc Lalonde, André Ouellet and Francis Fox, now responsible for Quebec in Mr. Martin’s office.

There must be others. Any other bouts of sticky fingers from Canada’s past?

Russia v. Green Bay

Beer teaches. At least in the sense that you learn a few things when hunting for beer stories. Consider this latest decree from Vlad Putin:

A ban on consumption of beer in public places came into effect in Russia this month, but no one knows how effectively it can be enforced. President Vladimir Putin ordered the ban following months of parliamentary debates. Supporters of the ban, coming shortly before World Health Day Apr. 7, argue it could help rising alcoholism and indiscipline, particularly among the young. The new law bans consumption of beer in places like recreational parks, sports buildings, educational establishments, medical institutions and public transport. The fine for violation would be the equivalent of 3.50 dollars. Legislation passed in August last year had banned advertisement of beer. But consumption of beer, considered by many to be a soft drink, continues to soar.

Compare that to a 110 year old prohibition that continues in part of Green Bay, Wisconsin:

In a city with an image of pubs full of Packer fans enjoying a pint while watching the game, one neighborhood has firmly stayed dry. Not an ounce of alcohol has been legally served in public anywhere in a three mile-by-two mile area on the city’s west side where a 110-year-old law still bans the stuff out of fear that saloons might degrade the neighborhood. But area business leaders say the ban has crimped development. They hope voters opt to scratch the booze ban in a referendum Tuesday, when more than 20,000 residents will be asked whether to let restaurants and hotels serve alcohol.

Obviously there is a lot of middle ground but it would be interesting to see 50 people from each land dropped into the other.

Vatican v. Gomery Handbags

In a remarkable move consciously mirroring this week’s plot of The West Wing, differences are appearing amongst the cardinals heading to Rome:

With Pope John Paul II lying in state, the battle over his legacy is being brought into the open by some cardinals preparing to choose his successor. The comments are preceded by praise for the pontiff who led the Roman Catholic Church for 26 years, but the need for change and renewal is being made clear. It started Sunday when Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a contender to become the next pope, criticized what he suggested was a church out of touch with contemporary life. “The church must adapt to the modern world,” Hummes, the Archbishop of San Paolo, said before heading to Rome. “It can’t give ancient answers to new questions.” The next pope, he added, “must respond to progress and maintain a serious dialogue with science.”

I am just surprised that he made no comment on the testimony from the Gomery commission…sorry the explosive testimony. Favorite Gomery memes¹ so far:

  • Canadians are whimps for not breaking a court order – no need to link to that one. Its everywhere;
  • Canada is a dictatorship because of publication bans – yikes! Blog cops!! In my shed!!! They are watching us all!!!!;
  • Use of plummy pip-pip rights of an Englishman talk in a failed effort to talk law;
  • Poor Paul Martin – vote Tory (nice try Ben…vote NDP… or even independent Rhino); and
  • Best of all – AL YOR BLOGS AR US – the stone brained demands of 14 year olds everywhere that you must let them post any loony comment they can think up.

So far – its men in red gowns 1 v. panicy bloggers in Canada 0 as far as confidence in their democractic institutions goes. Sad.

[Ed.: What was that? Who are you? HEEEEeeeeeeeelp me – the blog cops got meeeee….]

¹ Note: Ben and I hate this word yet I use this word.

Hello to Gomery Seekers!

What are all you people doing here right now? There are tons of you. Was this just on TV or something? Are you aware the NCAA finals are on CBS right now? Politics will still be there tomorrow but it is a hell of a game so just make sure you won’t have that old “I think I watched the wrong blue glowing tube” feeling tomorrow morning.

Say hello before you go…